Repairing Raspberry Pi SD holder

Do a quick Google, and you’ll find a lot of people have broken their Raspberry Pi SD card socket. Justin Shaw and I both broke ours within 15 minutes of each other while chatting on the Internet. In my case, I put my finger on the card while unplugging the HDMI cable.

The plastic is very brittle on the SD card holder of the Raspberry Pi. This one broke off on the right side when it was dropped with a card in place.

Adafruit makes a nifty half length Micro-SD to SD slot adapter. If I had this to begin with, my slot probably wouldn’t have broken. When I saw it, I thought maybe I could glue it in to restore function to the broken Pi. Phil Torrone of Adafruit graciously sent me one to try. (Warning: It’s hard to fix this slot, and hard to find a replacement, so I really had little to lose, but it would also be easy to mess things up further. If you don’t fix your Pi, and end up with a glued in sd adapter you can’t use, I’m not responsible!)

There’s a gap between the bottom of the “Card” and the PCB, so we’ll need a space filling glue that sticks to fiberglass

I happen to have some 5 minute epoxy that I purchased on a trip to Japan. It has glass in the pictures, so I figure it will do.

I always get a little nervous at this step. Mix according to instructions. Equal amounts of the two parts. It sets up in 5 minutes but you should leave it overnight before applying too much force.

Glue and Clamp. I put some along the edges of the socket (make sure you don’t get it on the contacts) and then placed the adapter, and dripped some in to the gap. You should probably wait over night. While it’s pretty solid in 5 minutes, it may not be totally bonded/cured for 24 hours.